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Wearing a dark suit with a new logo necktie from San Diego State, Jim Sterk stood behind a microphone in February 2010 and made a declaration. He said he hoped to “transform and awake the sleeping giant” of Aztecs athletics.

It was his first press conference as SDSU’s new athletic director. After several dark years at SDSU, it also was the first sign that maybe this guy didn’t know what he was getting himself into exactly.

Hadn’t he heard this place was a coaches’ graveyard?

All seven SDSU head football coaches from 1973 to 2008 had been fired from their jobs. Before Sterk, several other aspiring giant-wakers had tried – and failed – to stir the snoozing potential of SDSU sports. What made this guy think it would get any better under him?

The answer, according to him, was a good hunch.

Fifteen months later, Sterk, 54, has operated an athletic department that has produced a harvest like never before in Aztecs history. It includes:

--Off the field, the department budget even has found better footing thanks largely to increased donations from boosters.

All of which raises a question: Who is this guy, some kind of magician?

Sterk says no. “It’s timing and a lot of prayer,” he said.

His formula also includes an ingredient SDSU apparently needed badly: Stability.

“He just kind of calmed the waters,” SDSU booster Art Flaming said.

Prior to Sterk’s arrival, it had been a somber time on Montezuma Mesa. Sterk’s predecessor, Jeff Schemmel, had resigned in November 2009 after the Union-Tribune reported he had sought university reimbursement for expenses related to a trip to see a mistress in Alabama. It marked the second time since 2003 that SDSU’s athletic director had resigned amid scandal.

Meanwhile, the football team hadn’t had a winning season since 1998, hurting the department’s revenue potential. The department had a $2 million deficit in 2009 and was on course to lay off 25 full-time positions over a two-year period.

Good timing

Amid that backdrop, Sterk’s hiring became a curious subject for many observers of the program. Why would this guy come here? Why would he leave the same job at a Pac-10 Conference school, Washington State, in his home state of Washington?

Sterk’s answer to those questions is that he had been looking for a new opportunity after 10 years as the athletics boss at WSU. When the SDSU job came open, he studied its infrastructure. Where historians saw a graveyard, he saw a jet on a runway. “I felt that a lot of the foundation had been built with good coaches,” Sterk said.

He called his wife, Debra, and said, “This could be something we really take a hard look at.” He then called Kevin White, the athletic director at Duke, formerly Sterk’s boss at Tulane and the University of Maine. It was a key contact. White happened to know SDSU President Stephen Weber from their days at Harvard’s Institute for Educational Management. After White called Weber to let him know about Sterk’s interest, Sterk was hired a few months later over two younger candidates who no athletic director experience.

It turned out to be what SDSU needed this year, supporters say. Somebody with experience and polish. Somebody calm and positive. Somebody with a good handshake and no hubris.

“He’s not a guy learning on the fly,” SDSU men’s basketball coach Steve Fisher said. “He has the ability to listen and say, ‘Let’s try to do it.’ That’s a strength of his. He has great people skills and no ego, a smile that’s infectious. He’s a very positive person, and that rubs off on everyone.”

Previous athletic directors didn’t always have those traits.

“He’s a quiet leader,” said Leon Parma, an SDSU booster and former quarterback.

Providing stability

Sterk, a native of Nooksack, Wash., has the demeanor of small-town guy with a disarming smile and laugh. At the same time, his experience provides him with the sharpness required to unravel some of SDSU’s tougher knots, namely the financial situation. Many universities are facing steep budget cuts around the country, forcing them to lay off employees or cut sports.

At SDSU, about half of his athletics revenue of roughly $33 million comes from student fees and state money – funds that could shrink further in the coming year. At one point he said he told his new SDSU bosses , “I can’t solve this right now. I can’t make any more personnel cuts. Give me three years to balance this thing out. We kind of put a three-year plan together, but we solved it in a year.”

Despite those challenges, good things started to happen immediately after Sterk arrived on campus. His official start day was March 17, 2010. Six days later, the SDSU women’s basketball team earned its first-ever berth in the Sweet Sixteen.

But he doesn’t pretend it’s because of him. Much of an athletic director’s legacy is made with hirings, firings and fundraising. Of SDSU’s 17 head coaches, five were hired under Rick Bay, SDSU’s athletic director from 1995 to 2003. Another five were hired under Schemmel, including football coach Brady Hoke, who led SDSU to its first winning season since 1998. Only two so far have been hired by Sterk: new women’s lacrosse coach Kylee White and football’s Rocky Long, whom Sterk promoted from defensive coordinator after Hoke left for Michigan.

It was Hoke’s departure from SDSU that helped Sterk put his budget in better balance: Michigan paid SDSU $1 million to buy out Hoke’s contract. Additionally, SDSU’s fundraising has nearly doubled from $5.6 million in 2009-10 to over $10.1 million this year, largely because of donor Ron Fowler, who pledged $5 million with the hope that other donors would match his gift.

“He’s just open,” Flaming said of Sterk. “He’s got a smile on his face, and he shakes your hand. It’s positive. I don’t mind giving to the school when you’ve got somebody like that.”

Sterk, who makes $295,000 per year, plans to stay a while. For his first two months on the job, he was living out of the Sheraton in Mission Valley. But he recently bought a house near the San Diego Zoo’s Safari Park. He and his wife have three daughters: two in college and one in high school.

“All I’ve tried to do is stabilize things,” Sterk said of his first full year at SDSU. “There’s a great group of people here. They’ve been through a lot. The morale and everything was really down, and we were going through budget cuts. Getting through that, I felt like I could help.”